Ford says selling 10 Focus Electrics in three months is "on track"

From the looks of things, the Ford Focus Electric has decidedly poor sales. In fact, according to numbers that Green Car Reports is reporting – and Ford is not denying – only 10 units have been sold since the car went on sale late last year: seven in December, three in January and none in February.

Now, we knew that widespread sales were pushed back until September, but isn't the car available in California and New York/New Jersey already? Could the $39,200 price be driving people away, even though the car qualifies for up to $10,000 in tax incentives in California ($7,500 elsewhere)? Is it a problem of supply or incredibly low demand? Do low all-electric vehicle sales imply anything about future plug-in vehicles from the Blue Oval.

We asked Ford about these numbers, and Ford's Wes Sherwood told AutoblogGreen that only select fleet customers have been able to buy the Focus EV thus far. He said:

We are on track with the Focus Electric launch. We began by selling a small number of vehicles to a few fleet customers. We are now ramping up retail production to begin selling vehicles to retail customers in New York, New Jersey and California in the first half of this year. We then will expand sales to 16 other markets later this year.

We continue to expect sales of all-electric to be small even when we ramp up retail production. This is new technology, and it takes time to take hold. Remember, initial hybrid sales were slow. We remain confident about electrified vehicles for the future and are working to make the ownership experience enjoyable. We still expect 10 to 25 percent of Ford's global sales will be attributable to electrified vehicles by 2020. This includes hybrids, plug-in hybrids and pure battery electric vehicles, with most sales coming from hybrid electric vehicles.

Source: Autoblog Green